CastroCare in the time of cholera

Abe Greenwald cites a report from the Miami Herald that “the first cholera outbreak in Cuba in a century has left at least 15 dead and sent hundreds to hospitals all but sealed off by security agents bent on keeping a lid on the news.” CastroCare is, Greenwald reminds us, Michael Moore’s model heathcare system.

Cholera, which was supposed to have been wiped out in Cuba around 1900, is only one of many Cuban health crises. The Herald reports that “during one 24-hour period in January, three flights from Cuba to Toronto arrived with groups of passengers suffering from nausea, vomiting and fever.” There’s also “an acute soap shortage,” and “rumors of an increase in dengue, a disease transmitted by mosquitoes that thrive during the hot and rainy months of summer.”

Greenwald diagnoses the problem in his usual trenchant manner:

The people of Cuba can’t get proper treatment because they are being penalized for the worst precondition going: Communism. The same pre-condition has prevented them from even speaking of their misery: “a hospital employee reported that doctors are signing death certificates saying that the victims died from ‘acute respiratory insufficiency’ rather than cholera.”

Obamacare is not CastroCare, of course. But in arguing for overhauling our health care system, leftists like Michael Moore touted the Cuban model as superior to ours. Moore went so far as to take ailing 9/11 relief workers for treatment in a Havana hospital.

If Moore took them there now, he and his group would probably be stuck in Castro’s Paradise for quite some time on health related grounds.